Rotten (15 page)

The camera shifted to an enlarged map of Texas with a red star over the ranch.  “Please pass this information along and help your fellow man reach safety here at the sanctuary and for updates turn into my radio program at …” The video ended abruptly.

“The signal crapped out, but I found him on the radio and he’s repeating the same thing basically.”  Rotten shut the laptop and we all sat silently for a moment.

“My dad used to say the Bible was a dangerous thing in the hands of an evil man,” Will said.  “And that guy seems evil to me.” 

“He contradicts himself by saying survivors have been chosen, but some survivors are insane.  In essence, some survivors are better than others and he will decide who has been chosen or not,” Sully said.

“Well crap,” Princess sighed.  “The world starts again just as screwed up and power hungry as it ended.  I hate the world.” 

“Well, I sure the hell ain’t going to Texas.”  Moonshine crushed a beer can in his hand. 

“If there is one nut job trying to recreate the world in their own image I’m sure there are others.  So I think Rotten is right, we need to be prepared to protect ourselves against zombies and crazies.”  I laughed.  “I sound just like the fat man in the video.” 

“I think it’s going to be a strange new world and I suppose you kids are right, we need to be prepared, antibiotics, guitars, and paint.”  Mrs. Williams laughed softly.  “But Will stays here, the rest of you are adults and can do what you want.”

“But I want to go, and I’m better with a gun than everybody else except Moonshine,” Will said.

“Son, what would your father say?” Sully said softly.

Will expelled his breath in a huff and leaned back in his chair.  “He wouldn’t want me to go.” 

“You’ll be able to go soon, Will,” Highland said. “But I think we should check it out first.  Hell, at this point we have no idea what’s happening a mile away, so we may not even make it to Arlington on the first trip out.” 

“What else do you know about that man in Texas,” Sully asked, stepping away from the table to pick up a book from beside the couch. 

“He’s always been a fear monger, the world was always going to end on this day or that day and by this way or that way.  He probably does have a fortified ranch; I think he got pretty rich selling doom.  Although a lot of what he said politically was true, I always felt like he had an alternative agenda and it wasn’t about sharing the truth.  He seemed protected somehow, in the conspiracy world they call it controlled opposition where they give you an illusion of choice between two sides, but neither side has the real truth so it just leads you in crazy circles.  And frankly I always felt like he was in the pocket of some higher ups to say what he said and not get killed for it, but most people in the conspiracy circles think he is a god.”

Sully rested his hands on the book he had retrieved.  “I’ve been thinking about what you said, Reginald, concerning there being a level of people, or perhaps not even people, making the decisions for us.  At first that was so incredibly ludicrous to me I couldn’t even hold the thought in my head, but now I fear it makes more sense than anything else.  I can’t imagine it was politicians, presidents, or kings and queens who made the decision to unleash a zombie apocalypse.  I hate that word.” He shook his head.   “Because there would be no benefit for them, nothing to gain when the entire population is dead or won’t obey the rules.  So it had to come from a higher place, a place far above what we think is the top.”  He opened the book in front of him to a marked page.

“Grady was quite the history buff, and I found this today … ‘Since I have entered politics, I have chiefly had men’s views confided to me privately.  Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture are afraid of something.  They know there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.’  That was President Wilson in 1913.  So Princess is right when she says it’s starting the same way it ended, whatever this thing was that President Wilson spoke of, it’s still out there.  And people like that man from Texas are mighty useful idiots.” 

“I won’t say it’s aliens, but it’s aliens.” Moonshine chuckled nervously and punched Rotten in the arm.

“It ain’t human, that’s all I know.”  Princess opened a beer and took a long sip. 

“I’m no Bible thumper,” Highland said, “but I’ve read it and one thing that I have never forgotten is a passage from Ephesians which says, ‘For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.’  And when Rotten talks about unseen rulers I always think of that. ”

Princess and I looked at each other and shrugged, Highland read the Bible - who knew?  “So now we not only have to worry about zombies, we also have religious nut jobs who may or may not go on crusades to rid the world of the survivors that they deem inferior, and unseen aliens controlling everything.  Perfect, if it’s not one thing it’s another,” I said. 

“How many cabins are on this dirt road, Will?”  Highland pulled the laptop across the table and opened it to display the screen wallpaper that was a map of the area.

“On this road I think there are six, it’s a dead end a couple miles up and Bob Arnett’s is the last one on the road.”

“Okay I think before we go into Arlington we should go to each cabin, check for survivors and zombies, and get whatever supplies are there.  Then once we see what we need and we’ll check out the town.”

Day Six

Tuesday

December 16, 2014

Early in the morning, Will, Sully, Rotten, and Princess loaded into the truck and Jeep and pulled down the driveway.  Rotten said the first cabin was on the other side of the rise that Grady’s cabin was built into, and was also built into the hill.  They talked about how cool it would be if we could dig a tunnel through the hill to connect them.  Sully quickly told them that they would need a boring machine to get through the rock and they dropped the idea with a laugh. 

The neighboring cabin was also an A-frame of log and glass and they got in easily through the front door without shattering it.  In that cabin Princess found some better fitting clothes, raided the bathroom cabinet for tampons and toilet tissue, and took the scale.  She didn’t find any art supplies, and Rotten didn’t find a guitar, but he did find two full cans of gas.  Sully found maps, books, and several bottles of liquor and wine.  And Will added a couple more rifles to our growing selection, he told me the makes and models, which I can’t remember, but he was excited with his treasure.  In the kitchen they only found a few canned goods, pasta, coffee, and some crackers. 

The next cabin up wasn’t the glass and logs type, but sat low under thick trees and just looked like a place where zombies would be, according to Rotten.  Princess swore it was haunted upon first seeing it and even Sully said it gave him a chill when it came into view.  The dark wooden building sat on an exposed rock foundation, only had two windows, and the boards that made up the façade were thick, nothing like you could find today, which led Sully to believe it was built in the early 1900s.  Two stairs led to the door that was bolted with a padlock.  Will said they stared at it for a long time before Sully called out.  Then Rotten knocked on the door and peeked into the windows. 

Will laughed when he explained how long it was before anyone got the nerve to cut the lock, but finally they did, with guns ready, and there was no one inside.  They did find some oil lanterns, a stovetop percolator, and some more pots and pans to use on our noisemaking line of security.  They said the inside of the cabin hadn’t changed much since the 1930s and had a wood stove big enough for cooking and baking and they debated bringing it back to our cabin.  The thing must have weighed five hundred pounds the way they talked about it and they decided if we needed it we could get it later. 

The next cabin was exactly a mile away and was nicer than the last and smaller than the big A-frames.  In it Will found a complete wardrobe that fit him, including a good pair of boots, and an unopened box with a model of the Star Trek Enterprise.  Princess found a mostly unused sketchpad and colored pencils, she also grabbed the crayons and coloring books.  They discovered that the room they were raiding belonged to a boy named Allen, and said that it was difficult to conceive that he was probably dead.  “He was an artist,” Princess said later, showing me his work in the sketchpad.  They also found a little more food, rice and other dry goods, and moved on to the next cabin. 

The next place had a mailbox with delicately painted flowers and the name Simpson written on it, and a mobile home was set in a landscaped yard.  A pink Cadillac with a handicap sticker was parked in the driveway and a wheelchair ramp led to the front door. Rotten called out, “Hello!  Is anyone there?”

They heard a thump from inside and walked slowly up the ramp.  Rotten called out again.  “We’re not here to hurt you, we’re just checking to make sure everyone’s okay.”  They heard another thump and a groan. 

The front door had a panel of glass and Rotten peered into the house.  I don’t know what Mrs. Simpson looked like before the zombie apocalypse, but now she looked pretty rough.  She wore a pink pantsuit that was so stained with body fluids that Princess said only the hem on one pant leg still showed the original color.  She was thin, very thin, as in starving-to-death thin, and the tight skin over her cheekbones had begun to rot away leaving open black sores with exposed cartilage.  A wheelchair lay on its side in the small foyer and Mrs. Simpson was trapped under a bookcase. It appeared to them that it had fallen on her as she tried to pull herself up, but the rest of the house was in shambles so there was no way of knowing.  She writhed under the weight of the sturdy wooden shelves and was trapped against the front door.

“We have to kill it,” Rotten said.

“Yeah, it’s only right to relieve her suffering.” Princess agreed.

“I’ll do it,” Will said, holding up the pistol in his hands.

“No, you won’t,” Sully said.

“I’ve killed deer before.”

“Well, this isn’t an animal, it’s human and you’re not killing it, you’re just a kid.  I’ll do it.” Sully volunteered, but Princess said she could tell he sure didn’t want to.

They walked around to the back door, jimmied the lock with a crow bar, and stepped inside slowly with their weapons raised.  The floor plan of the trailer was open so they could clearly see the woman thrashing through the doorway of the small foyer and the room was thick with the putrid smell of decomposition.

“You have to shoot it in the head,” Rotten said, and the woman growled, snapped, and drooled some thick black liquid that he assumed was once blood. 

Sully raised the pistol and looked down the barrel.

“You have to take the safety off.” Will reached over and clicked off the locking mechanism.  “I don’t know why you just won’t let me do it.”

“Shhh…” Sully said and fired.  He hit her in the center of the forehead, her skull cracked in two like a dried up apple, and she collapsed.  Sully’s hands were shaking when he slid the gun back in his holster and Princess saw sweat on his forehead despite the chill in the air.

“Damn, that was a good shot,” Will said.  “Where’d you learn to shoot like that?”

“Don’t curse, Will,” was all he said.

  They didn’t search the place after putting the old woman down because they were sure that anything from her house would have absorbed the scent of her rotting flesh.  They opened a couple windows to air out the place and discussed burying the body, but no one wanted to get anywhere near her for fear of contracting the virus from the body fluids.  They left her where she lay and moved on to the next cabin.

At the next stop Rotten hit pay dirt when he found an older, well-kept guitar in a soft case.  He went on and on when they returned about how it was a Martin, but that didn’t mean anything to us and he just shook his head and sighed at our ignorance as he strummed it.   They also found a pair of rocking chairs on the front porch of that cottage that Princess said she must have, so they loaded them on the back of the truck.  Sully found more liquor and another full gas can, and Will found some cards, checkers and a Monopoly game.  They didn’t find much food, but took the little that was there, mainly cans of beef stew and sardines.